Category Archives: stats

stats

BTN November 2017

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

Well that’s November done and dusted, we are now on the home stretch to 2018. But how did I do gaming wise in November? As you will see this was an amazing month for the number of plays. In fact a record breaking month! But the number of games I played was a new all time low. The reason for that is that there has been no Friday Night Gaming at the White Lion for most of November. I’ve more or less stopped organising these because of lack of interest. But as you will see I have played a few games of Magic the Gathering this month. Most of these games have been against my students, one or two of them seem to have become addicted to the game.

Anyhooo, here are the stats for November 2017…

Here are the different measures for the average. It’s pretty obvious that the plays smashes them all, but the plays is considerably under.

The final section as usual presents the data graphically so we can try and see trends. This big spike is going to skew things a bit I think.

My Game of the Month…

There was only one new game in November and because of the issues I reported with the size of the components and the hard to read numbers on the tiles, I can’t in all honesty make it the game of the month. So for the second time this year there is no game of the month.

My gaming moment of the month…

This will be the first of an “as and when” addition to this monthly retrospective.

Worst Game of the Month…

The board game world breathes a big sigh of relief as once again there is no new entry to the Nantucket Wing of Shame. Although the Barenpark Cellar of over hyped games does take up a lot of room in it.

Hopefully hitting the table in December…

Clans of Caledonia did make it to the table in November. So I have dropped that off the list.

  • Suburbia – I really need to get this to the table. It’s been sitting in my collection for a while now. It’s shameful I haven’t played it yet.
  • Ghost Stories – another classic that has been sitting in my collection. About time this saw the light of day also.
  • Twilight Imperium (4th Edition) – came out earlier than expected. A couple of game sessions are set up to play this, hopefully they will happen.

  • Every second Wednesday of the month we have our monthly meet up. This month that second Wednesday is 13th December. More details on the clubs Facebook page (link at the bottom of  this post).

Click on the image to get a larger view of the gaming sessions planned so far for the month of December.

If you are in the area and want to attend one of the events, please visit the Fenland Gamers Facebook page for further details about the event. Hope to see you there

BTN October 2017

by the numbers, stats

We’re back baby! Well after the dip last month, this month has bounced right back. Getting some of my students hooked on MtG has helped a lot on this front.

In general you can tell when I have played a collectable game of some sort in a month because the number of plays shoots up.

Some old friends found their way back to the table (Guilds of London, The Manhattan Project and Kemet). And I was pretty glad they did.

I think that there has been a good mix of different weight games, and types of games this month. I’m almost tempted to say it’s been a very strong month for games played if we look at what I actually got to the table.

Here is the stats for October.


Let’s look to see if I beat the averages. I totally smashed the measurements for plays. Not even close. But for played games I under performed for everything but the mode measurement.


The final section as usual presents the data graphically so we can try and see trends.

My Game of the Month…

There were three new games that I got to play this month. The first was the micro/filler card game Red7,  the second the horror co-op survival game Sub Terra and the third was the second edition of the Martin Wallace board game London. All completely different games, yet really enjoyable. Sadly all the baggage that surrounds Sub Terra rules it out from the running for this title. I think both of remaining two games are good enough to get the much coveted title of my game of the month. But I think that the quality issues of the cards in London are enough to give the title to Red7. It’s a harsh way to lose, but I had to use something  as the deciding factor.

This is a great game, fun to play, sounds simple when you hear the rules, but surprisingly complex. Plus With the basic, advanced and variant rules able to grow with the players as they become more familiar with the rules. Worthy winner of my game of the month.

My gaming moment of the month…

I think it has to be the “hey look over there, nothing to see over here” play in Kemet, when Liz stopped Dave from winning, leaving it open for me to get victory. That was an awesome moment. 

Worst Game of the Month…

What’s happening yet another month where this infamous award has not had a single nomination. If I’m not careful Jonathan will be putting the Nantucket wing of shame to other uses, like housing new purchases instead.

Hopefully hitting the table in November…

Two out of three ain’t bad. I managed to play multiplayer Commander in October and by the skin of the teeth play Zombicide with the Big Bang Theory Characters. Sadly I didn’t get Hero Realms to the table. But I think I need new goals for November.

  • Suburbia – I really need to get this to the table. It’s been sitting in my collection for a while now. It’s shameful I haven’t played it yet.
  • Clans of Caledonia – when this kickstarter arrives (it was in the post at the time of writing allegedly) this will be getting to the table ASAP.
  • Ghost Stories – another classic that has been sitting in my collection. About time this saw the light of day also.

We have our regular events happening which are:

  • The weekly Friday Evening Gaming at The White Lion (or FEG@WL as I call it)
  • Every second Wednesday of the month we have our monthly meet up. This month that second Wednesday is 8th November and will be meeting up at The White Lion.

Also this weekend our Magic the Gathering League Season 2 kicks off, here are the dates for when it is being held.

There will be other gaming sessions going on also in November. Details will go up on our Facebook page for when and where.

If you are in the area and want to attend one of the events, please visit the Fenland Gamers Facebook page for further details about the event. Hope to see you there

BTN September 2017

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

I enjoy this monthly opportunity to look back and reflect on the previous months gaming. But when you see this months numbers, holy cow the impact of Dale and I not getting a chance to play Star Wars: Destiny is massive. It’s a very busy time of year for us, new timetables, not a lot of gaps where we are free at the same time. I think we have found a slot one lunchtime we are both able to play a couple of games. We will have to see how that goes.

Incredibly there was only one new game played this month. I don’t think that has ever happened. I’m going to have to review the stats, because if it did then it was in the early days of record keeping I’m sure.

Super happy that Scythe got to the table twice. It’s a great game, and once that new expansion hits will be hitting the table even more. Also two other big games hit the table this month. It’s kind of important to acknowledge the impact these games have on the number of plays for the month. Take Star Wars: Rebellion for instance. That game for Diego and myself on Saturday took four hours to play (including the new setup involved with the expansion). If we had been playing lighter games instead we might have got three or four games/plays in, in the same time period.

I also wasn’t able to attend a couple of gaming sessions this month due to life stuff, other commitments. So that also would impact the stats a little. But not by much.

Anyway enough waffling, here are the cold hard and fast numbers from the BG Stats app for September.


Averages time. I only beat the mode number of plays in September. The others I was not even close. And I repeat this with the number of games played also. Under on arithmetic mean and median, just over on mode.

The final section as usual presents the data graphically so we can try and see trends. After the fluctuating recent highs, September looks like a stock market crash on the plays front. Maybe I should normalise the previous months so they don’t have the Destiny numbers and see how big a drop it is if any?

My Game of the Month…

There was only one new to me game this month. But I don’t like to just give an award by default. Does Broom Service warrant being game of the month? I liked the game, it has some nice mechanics, great artwork. But still I’m not sure it makes the grade to be game of the month. So no winner this month.

Worst Game of the Month…

I’m glad to report no candidates for this award this month.

Hopefully hitting the table in October…

But going to put the ones from the last month back on for October.

  •  Zombicide – I want to get this to the table with the Big Bang Theory characters and see how they do in the zombie apocalypse.
  • Hero Realms with the character expansions.
  • Magic the Gathering Commander (with more than two players)

  • The weekly Friday Evening Gaming at The White Lion (or FEG@WL as I call it)
  • Every second Wednesday of the month we have our monthly meet up. This month that second Wednesday is 11/10/17.

I’m hoping that if you click on the image you can see what days we have stuff planned for so far in October.

If you are in the area and want to attend one of the events, please visit the Fenland Gamers Facebook page for further details about the event. Hope to see you there

BTN July 17

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

“School’s out forever, School’s out for summer”

The start of July is a busy time. We’ve just said good bye to the students, work is being externally moderated (that’s a nervous time for sure), staff development is taking place, some planning is going on for the new academic year. Yet while all that is going on we can see the light at the end of the tunnel that is our holiday.

Despite a busy two weeks Dale and I still managed to squeeze in 39 games of Star Wars: Destiny for the month. Or team building as we like to call it. Two afternoons of our holiday have helped with this.

But I’m jumping the gun, you haven’t seen the numbers for the month. So here they are…

I played some big games this month. And I’m loving that. Not only that but a couple of them got to the table more than once. The MtG league started, it was well attended and everyone had a great time. A date was also set for the next league day (see below).

So let’s look at the three different types of average for my data.


I’ve managed to beat the averages on number of plays. But the games played failed to beat two of the measures.

The final section as usual presents the data graphically so we can try and see trends.

My Game of the Month…

I liked Descent, but I think there can only be one winner this month.  This months game of the month is …

Xia is soooo epic. I don’t get tired of describing it as Elite the board game. I can’t wait to introduce Nath to this game. I think he will like it. Just play this sandbox game, you will be impressed by the quality of the components, the game play. It’s just amazing.

Worst Game of the Month…

I can gladly declare that there is no new inductee to the Nantucket Wing of Shame or Barenpark cellar of over hyped games for this month.

Hopefully hitting the table in August…

All new games this month. You will notice I have put a few of kickstarters on the list that have either just arrived or I am expecting to arrive during August.

  • The weekly Friday Evening Gaming at The White Lion (or FEG@WL as I call it)
  • Every second Wednesday of the month we have our monthly meet up. This month that second Wednesday is on the 9th.

Please note that the BSG game below is now at the maximum player count.


If you are in the area and want to attend one of the events, please visit the Fenland Gamers Facebook page for further details about the event. Hope to see you there

Ranking Engine Update

coding, ranking, stats, tech, TopXX Games

I feel like I have been doing lots to this project this week with not much to show for it.

As you can see I’ve just edged over the 25% mark for the number of pairwise comparisons that I need to do for my game ranking of my collection.

I’m not going to bore you with another “look at my current top 10”. Instead I’m going to bore you with my top 10 worker placement games based on my current rankings of games. 

What this really show cases is the start of the next stage of my stats engine. After a bit of behind the scenes rewriting of code, I’ve started a gui front end (see below). It’s an ugly, not designed gui. I’ll sketch something out over the weekend. 

But basically I can select a game mechanic and find all the games in my collection that have that mechanic. 

It then takes those results, and finds out how I’ve ranked them, followed by printing out the top ten. 

So before I add categories, designers and publishers I need to sort out the gui. That’s the major effort. 

Once that’s been done I’ll expand the stats to look at the bgg hotlist, followed by the bgg all time top 100. 

I then have more stuff on the road map. Wait did I just type that? That almost makes me sound like professional and I’ve planned it. But in reality I haven’t and I’m not. I’m making things up as I go along. I have ideas that I really should write down before they are lost. In away these posts are acting as my dev notebook. Well hopefully gentle reminders. 

Hopefully you can see things are progressing both code wise and rankings wise. I also hope you are finding the verses posts interesting. Which were a surprise spin off from this project.

Anyway I’ll see you in my next post.

May 2016 By The Numbers

by the numbers, stats

So a new month, time to reflect on my stats for the month of May.

May has been a pretty good month for gaming. I took part in my first Netrunner organised play at The Hobbit Hole, which was great fun. I'm in the process of organising an Ashes event with the official op kits (now on their way). But look at that massive fifty plays I had for May. I didn't think I'd beat the March total for a while.

Two more games disappeared off the pile of shame (Eight Minute Empire Legends, and Brew Crafters: The Travel Card Game), and another got back to the table after nearly a year from trying it with Nath (Nations the Dice Game). Plus I got to play six new games. Two of them got added to the collection, and one was mine that I had just bought.

Let's look at the graph for the over all trend.

My Game of the Month

I think on reflection this would have been a choice between two games Traders of Osaka and Bohemian Villages at the start of the month when I first played them. However there is only one clear winner, and it will come as no surprise, Bohemian Villages is my game of May. Jonathan and I LOVE this game. When we go to gaming sessions its in our bags ready to be pulled out. It's our go to game at the moment.

This really is a great little gem of a game, deserves a lot more love, but with none existent coverage in the gaming media its remaining under everyone's radar.

Worst Game of the Month

I am very happy to say that this month there are no candidates for this award. Even my experience of Agricola was pleasant.

 

By the numbers stats for April 2016

by the numbers, stats

So has it been a month already? Wow time flies these days. Without further ado let's look at my gaming stats for April.

Surprisingly I've only played in three places this month. With the majority of my game playing taking part on club nights.

This month we didn't make much progress with Pandemic Legacy for one reason or the other. Which is reflected in the number of plays, and the lack of Monday night gaming.

Fluxx in one theme or the other would be the most played game of the month with nine plays if my maths is correct.

As the vanilla graph shows I got a greater variety of games to the table, but there were less plays. I think if our Pandemic Legacy sessions hadn't been disrupted as much (and it's not going to improve for May due to one of the team taking a holiday for two weeks!) the number of plays would have been closer to the incredible March target.

Now let's try something new for these posts and pick the best and worst game I played during the month.

Best Game For April

Ok this has to Scoville. So much to love about this game. Great theme, the blind auction for turn order, set collection, hidden information. It looks amazing, lovely wooden chillies. Yeah, this has to be my game of the month for sure, no argument about it. This will be in my collection at some point. In the meantime I can't wait until Jonathan brings this to the table, or for him to get the new expansion.

Worst Game For April

I don't think the will be a surprise to regular readers of the blog when I say Caverna. The whole experience was a nightmare. Go read the blog post about it. It wasn't the games fault, and I'm sure once I've been taught it properly (on Jonathan's todo list) I'll like the game.

So that was the month of April by the numbers.

 

Stats for March 2016

by the numbers, stats

With March just ending its that time again to look at my gaming stats for the month.

Wow what a month hey? I thought I had done really well in February. Especially considering it's a shorter month than the others. But holy game pieces Batman I've blown that out of the water. Sadly as the locations show there were no Costa gaming sessions. So that will be an aim for April to get that being a thing again!
Thanks to the magic of Numbers I can produce a nice little graph to show my gaming trends. I think it's going to be hard to top March, and expect to see a dip next month. Hopeful not a big dip though.

March also happens to be the end of the first quarter for the year, so time to review the following that I wrote back in January.

So how did I do? Well as the games stats at the start show I got three of the five to the table. Which I think is not bad. Five Tribes was definitely the biggest hit of the three. Discoveries was a good game, but the wooden dice are horrid. As for Arena of the Planeswalker that game has so much potential but let down by poor support by the publisher.

But as I said in the initial post I'll be setting a list of five each quarter. We are now in a new quarter and therefore need a new list of games to try and get to the table.

  • Ashes
  • T.I.M.E. Stories
  • Thunderbirds
  • Dead of Winter
  • Imperial Settlers

Games that nearly made the list this month but just missed out: Elder Sign, Neuroshima Hex!, Seasons, Roll for the Galaxy and Eminent Domain. Who knows maybe they will make it to the table anyway.

So that was my gaming month by the numbers.